How did Noah fit all those animals on the ark?

There's no need. You've made some "confidence statements" that are unsupported by facts (the common things people in antiquity did; everyone built boats during floods (have you ever been in a flood?); etc.), but you haven't shown any of them to be factual.

I presented a line-for-line comparison using a method of literary critique that, had I used to compare works of Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, you wouldn't have objected. But because I pick on a particular mythology that you accept, without critical thought or inquiry, to be 100% accurate it's different.

There's no need for me to try any harder than that. Those with skills of reason and inquiry will see what I've written and consider it objectively. Those that have conclusion to which they've already arrived at will see only that which supports their conclusions. This is called delusion.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Maybe you're correct. I challenge you to either quantify that statement with a citation to a work of literature ca. 3000 BCE that mentions such behavior.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Unsupported by facts? People always build boats during floods...there's nothing else to do but build a boat or ship....its just the logical thing to do...go look on the news when there's great floods in cities people ride on boats....

There's nothing really similar about the two stories....I mean if Gilgamesh had two of each animal on his boat or something then maybe but the rest is just people trying to find similarities in two different stories...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Have you ever built a boat, VO? I mean really... you are seriously suggesting that its a coincidence that a god picked a "worthy man" to save, give him the 411 on the upcoming flood, and instruct him to build a boat? This is common practice? I need not refute a single word you're saying, you're doing well all by yourself.

Like I said, the credulous who have conclusions to which they've already arrived at will not look critically or with reason to anything that doesn't overtly support their position. You don't see the similarity because of personal incredulity and argument from personal ignorance. Nor do I expect you to give a reasoned and critical response to anything I've posted.

The reason I post isn't to convince you, but rather to provide critical and reasoned information for those that haven't arrived at conclusions and are genuinely curious. Those are the types of people that Google terms like "Noah's Flood" and "Gilgamesh" and land here. Then they see a side-by-side comparison of a reasoned and critical versus a credulous and uncritical opinion.

 

Some have told me that it was impossible that the animals could have fit in the Ark even as big as it was to include animals from all the Earth minus some obvious creatures.

However, one must consider the true nature of the Global Deluge. Is it possible that many animals didn't require the Ark perhaps there were other types of "Land" to exisst on. for those smaller easier to manage animals.

 

Yeah, I read that in the Bible to! In the Book of Bull

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

*thumbsuck*

 

And its also possible that the noachian flood myth was a story that was borrowed from the Sumerians, modified and embellished to fit their needs to provide explanations to religious followers just as all cultures have oral and written traditions that do the same.

It is utterly amazing to watch the religiously deluded carry on about how their mythology is literal truth whilst all the while accepting the mythical origins of stories from the Maya, Navajo, Fulani, Druids, Celts, Egyptians, Akkadians, Mongols and the thousands of other extant and extinct cultures, each with its own unique set of myths of origin, creation, and explanation.

Utterly amazing. Such behavior gives the anthropologist in me an ethnographic hard-on.

 

Actually it's not possible.
The bible is the most detail account of them all. The detail matches the others few match each other but all match the biblical account...
The bible has always be more detail and out of all the accounts its string of history is unequaled.

Forgive me..I believe I deprived you of your erection.

 

Sorry, what exactly is a vague 'stupid thing'?

Kindly provide something to support this claim.

Building a boat would hardly be the logical thing for an inland dwelling person to do if he had no knowledge of a flood. If the entire planet was then flooded he'd have little time to make a boat. Usually by the time you see the wave coming, you're already under it.

O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build

There you go, that should satisfy your requirements.

Eventually the boat lodges on a mountain... Birds are then sent out to test for land but come back without finding any. Then another bird is sent out. Finally he sacrifices an animal to which:

The gods smelled the savor,
the gods smelled the sweet savor

The bible says:

'yahweh smelt the pleasing smell'.

There is a lot more to it than "stupid things", but you have a bias. You're simply unable to look at the matter objectively.

 

Actualy there is actual of tradition of contempt and bias bred into the newest generation of children for the bible. This has been followed by lawlessness and an ascendinding disrespect toward authority which of course where the problem lies...

 

*************
M*W: Okay, now for the astro-theological take on Noah's Ark... there were only a handful of animals that had to fit into the proverbial Ark (Arka; Argo). They were a ram, bull, two fish, lion, crab, scorpion and goatfish. But we LL know this is just myth. They really didn't have to "fit" into a boat/ They were sky beings as was the Ark.

www.theosociety.org/pasadena/etgloss/ard-asr.htm

www.ufrsd.net/staffwww/stefanl/myths/argonavis.htm

Let's start with these two. Anything more technical right now wouldn't mean anything. All bible stories came from ancient humans interpreting the skies. I should say ancient men. Had ancient women interpreted the skies, they would probably have more of a maternal theme.

 

A) I don't really know how much you know about writing or like writing. I personally love it, can't get enough. I'll sit down and write a story from start to finish. This is called a first draft. I'll then go away, have a few drinks, wait a week and then come back to it. Upon reading it I end up making a second draft - which ammends the first draft. I add bits, change bits etc.

It doesn't ever work the other way around. You don't start off with a second draft and take bits away to end up with a first draft. No sir.

Let's say you want to do a rewrite of a story that was written 1,500 years ago. You can look at the various stories/legends etc and then write an account that incorporates parts from all of them while still retaining some form of originality, (your own interjections).

The simple fact of the matter - absolutely regardless to your bias, is that the Gilgamesh deluge account predates the biblical one by over a millennium. This, to all intents and purposes for this example, is the original, the first draft. If the event actually happened it would be the more accurate simply by being written closer to the actual events, and in either case would still be the first draft basis of latter accounts.

B) You mention it's "history". What exactly from the flood accounts can you show to be historically accurate?

 

A: I'm sure you don't start off that way. You point is vague.

B: It is a historical Fact that the flood occured. The correlation with hundreds of alike stories around the earth make it a corelated event. Which is what is nescessary to make it apart of history?

 

Sorry what exactly didn't you understand? I'll try and rephrase it.

LOL! (Let it be said I absolutely hate writing in caps but that was so damn funny I couldn't avoid it). Anyway, according to who exactly?

Guess you and vitalone need to come to an agreement. He fails to see any correlation in various flood stories whereas you see them all as intextricably linked. Of course needless to say it does tend to flood in many parts of the world - it's only normal you'd find different cultures with flood stories.

I would advise you for future reference to avoid using the word fact, unless you can support the claim with those 'facts'.

 

You make some excellent points Saquist, there are certainly hundreds of legends about the Deluge, and all the ancient Old World cultures had legends of the same event, like Fuhi of the Chinese legend, there is even a fresco of Fuhi's vessel, on the Deluge waters, with the dove flying away from the Ark, but of course, "that's all just coincidence."

 

Read the stories Snake, they are hardly accounts of local floods.

 

Two people see the same event and write stories A and B about it. Both contain similar things but differ in language and subtle content.

5 years later someone comes along to write about the same event. They see books A and B - and so use both books to write their account - story C.

Now A and B will only contain similar details for the largest things (the actual event happening etc). and will differ on the small detail (what they were doing at the time etc)

C uses all of A and B - so of course A will be included in C, as will B.

Because C was written later in time it can use all of the bits of A and B and combine them - thus being far closer to A or to B than A is to B.

If you can not understand this then please just accept that you're wrong and move along.

I suggest that you do a course in (a) history, and (b) logical fallacies.

The entire world could say that all the animals went two by two into the ark - yet it wouldn't be true (partly 'cos clean animals went in to the ark in 7s - not 2s!).
The entire world could think that Alpha Centaurii is the closest star to Earth - but it wouldn't be true (our sun is!).

Furthermore - stories do NOT constitute sufficient evidence to make something fact - no matter how rife they are throughout culture.

If culture A wrote about a local flood in the year 10,000 BC, and culture B wrote about a local flood that occured in 8,000 BC - but the two stories were only found in writings from 3,000 BC it is quite possible that one could claim there was at one point in history a world-wide flood. Yet the local floods occurred 2,000 years apart.

You do need to support your claims.
In some way.
Any way.
Any way at all.
Just a bit.

 

I didn't say I didn't see any correlation, I just didn't see how they were based off each other. There probably was a great flood and many stories stemmed from that same great flood....it doesn't mean they copied off each other....

I would estimate that the great flood occured around 28,740 BCE...scientists estimate that there was a great flood around 30,000 BCE

 

Your response is completely fallacious. It argues from personal incredulity and introduces a non sequitur. That you can't believe it to be possible doesn't negate the possibility that biblical mythology is adapted and borrowed, whilst being embellished and exaggerated, from much earlier written and oral traditions.

Moreover, your statement that the bible includes more detail is a non sequitur because it doesn't follow that the addition of embellished details and adaptive literary devices provides validity to the myth's veracity. It would seem that your perceived deprivation is naught.

But then, I've come to expect continued fallacy and lack of critical thought from the credulous and those that have already established conclusions to which they seek only data which is supportive.

In the end, perhaps I am deprived of an ethnographic hard-on since such intellectual and academic atrophy is depressing.

 

Skin, how do you know of any "addition of embellished details," and what supposed "adaptive literary devices" are you talking about?